Benson М. The Philosophy of Leibniz
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20 The
Philosophy
of
Leibniz
Polish
sejm. Against
the
advice
of the
elector,
who
favored
Prince
Karl,
Boineburg agreed
to do
this;
and he
also
offered
to do
some public relations
work
with
the
Poles
to
further Neuburg's chances
for
election. Young Leibniz
was
given
the
task
of
drawing
up
suitable campaign literature.
All of
this
occurred
in the
fall
of
1668;
the
sejm
was
scheduled
to
meet
in the
following
spring.
Leibniz worked "day
and
night
the
whole winter
. . .
without receiving
any
recompense whatever
for it" and
produced
a
remarkable 360-page
treatise entitled Specimen demonstrationum politicarum prorege Polonorum
eligendo
(Some political demonstrations concerning
the
election
of a
king
of
Poland),
26
using
the
pseudonym Georgius Ulicovius Lithuanus
and
pur-
porting
to be a
Polish aristocrat.
The
argument
is in
mathematico-deductive form, with propositions,
proofs, corollaries,
and
conclusions.
In the
sixty
propositions
and
their
corollaries
a
number
of
criteria
for the
office
(that
the
person selected should
be
just, prudent,
a
Catholic,
of
known ability, physically
and
mentally
vigorous, patient, modest,
not
from
a
turbulent
family,
not a
child,
and so
forth,
and so on) are
deduced
from
various plausible social
and
economic
generalizations about Poland. Then,
after
obtaining three conclusions
excluding
the
other principal candidates, Leibniz
finally
reaches
the end
result: Conclusio
IV:
Neoburgicus utiliter eligetur.
The
outcome
of all
this
effort
was
disappointing
to the
three associates.
So
much time
was
consumed
in
printing
the
large book that
it did not
reach
Warsaw until
after
the
election.
In the
meantime
the
Poles
had
rejected
Neuburg
and all the
other foreigners, and, without
the
benefit
of
Leibniz's
twenty-five
proofs
for his
proposition
60,
namely,
"that
the
king should
be
from
outside Poland
and
should
not be a
member
of the
Piast family,"
they
chose instead
the
Piast Michael Wisniowiecki.
Although Leibniz's expectation that such
a
chain
of
deductions could
really
affect
the
outcome
of the
election seems
a bit
naive even
in a
twenty-
two-year-old,
the
analytic power
and
philosophical content
of the
treatise
were
not
insignificant
and
aroused
the
admiration
of
contemporary political
scientists.
In his
later years Leibniz
still
valued this juvenile
effort
as
showing
how the
form
of
mathematical reasoning, hitherto applied only
in
philosophy
and
law, could
be
used
in
political
and
diplomatic disputes.
On his
return
from
Poland, Boineburg proposed that Leibniz next devote
himself
to the
preparation
of a new
edition
of a
philosophical work published
in
1553
by the
Italian nominalist Marius Nizolius
and
entitled
De
veris
principus
et
vera
ratione philosophandi contra pseudophilosophos
(On the
true principles
and
right
way of
philosophizing, against
the
pseudophilo-
sophers). Leibniz complied,
as
usual dedicating
the
work, with
a
florid
tribute,
to his
employer.
It was
published
in
1670. Leibniz's prefatory
dissertation
27
is
philosophically interesting, mainly
for its
discussion
of
nomi-
26
A.A.l.lff.
Cf.
Studia
Leibnitiana
1
(1969),
54ff.,
regarding
the
Polish
translation
of
this
work.
Cf.
also
CL
562ff.
27
GIV
127-76
(selections
translated
in L
121-130).
Life
and
Works
21
nalism. Although
he
recognizes some
of the
difficulties
inherent
in
that
doctrine,
he is
very strongly attracted
to it
himself. Thus, with reference
to the
nominalists' principle that entities should
not be
multiplied beyond necessity,
he
says:
"From
this principle they have deduced that everything
in the
world
can
be
explained without
any
reference
to
universals
and
real forms. Nothing
is
truer than this opinion,
and
nothing
is
more worthy
of a
philosopher
of our
own
time."
28
And in
many
other
passages, some
of
which
we
shall quote
in
later chap-
ters,
he
expresses similar sentiments.
He
does, however, criticize Nizolius's
overly
simplistic attempt
to
identify
universals with
the
aggregates
or
"herds"
of
objects
falling
under them;
he
points
out
that
if
"animal" denoted
the
aggregate
of all
animals, then "man
is
[an] animal" would mean "man
is all
animals taken together."
29
This preface deserves more
careful
study
by
philo-
sophers
of
language than
it has
received
up to
now.
In the
same year (1670) Leibniz began
his
correspondence
with
Henry
Oldenburg, secretary
of the
Royal Society
in
London.
With
his
first
letter
he
enclosed
a
friendly
and
rather flattering letter
for
Thomas
Hobbes,
whose
works
he had
been
carefully
studying
and
whose
views
on
many topics
he had
made
his
own. Hobbes
did not
favor
him
with
a
reply,
nor did he do so
later
when
Leibniz wrote
to him
from
Paris.
The
letters were
not
thrown away,
however,
and are
preserved
in the
British Museum.
30
Leibniz's next
big
project,
the
Consilium Aegyptiacum (Egyptian plan),
31
was
begun
in the
fall
of
1671. Louis
XIV of
France
had
been
menacing
his
neighbors, particularly Holland.
The
bordering German states were
fearful
lest
he
should attack them
as
well.
32
Accordingly, Leibniz
and
Boineburg
concocted
a
scheme
for
deflecting
the
French expansion
to
another direc-
tion: they would persuade Louis
to
attack Egypt instead.
The
elector
was let
in
on the
plan only later,
but
evidently
he
approved. Leibniz drew
up
numer-
ous
drafts
of
proposed memoranda;
finally,
as the
political events were
unfolding
rapidly,
he
produced
in
great haste
the
document
Justa
dissertatio
,
33
containing several hundred pages
of
arguments
as to why
Cairo
and
Constantinople should
be the
king's targets instead
of
Holland. Leibniz
argues,
for
example, that
the
Egyptian expedition
is
"the greatest
of the
possible projects,
and the
easiest
of the
great
ones,"
that
it is
risk-free
and
fits
in
so
well
with
the
king's goals that
it
looks almost preordained, that
it
would
wrest
from
Holland
the
domination
of the sea and of
commerce, that
it
could
be
accomplished using only "superfluous" (that
is, not
otherwise employed)
forces,
and so on.
Through
the
king's foreign minister, Arnauld
de
Pomponne, Leibniz
was
invited
to
Paris
to
present this proposal
in
person,
but by the
time
he
arrived
28
GIV
158(L 128).
29
G IV
160-61
(L
128-29).
The
point looks more
convincing
in
Latin, where there
is no
indefinite
article.
30
GI
82-85.
A
more accurate version
of the
first
letter
is
given
at G VII
572-74
(L
105-7).
31
A.4.1.215ff.
32
See
Klopp2,
100ff.
33
A.4.1.267ff.
100
2 2 The
Philosophy
of
Leibniz
there, England
had
already declared
war on
Holland,
and
France
was
about
to
follow
suit.
So the
proposal
needed drastic revision before
it
could
be
shown
to
anyone. This Leibniz never
got
around
to
doing; Paris
had too
many
other attractions
for
him. Soon afterward both Boineburg
and
Schonborn
died,
the
former quite unexpectedly;
and
that
was
essentially
the end of the
project.
According
to
Guhrauer,
the
plan
did
eventually
get to the
king's
council,
where
it was
rejected
with
the
comment that "holy wars went
out of
fashion
with Saint Louis."
34
When, more than
a
hundred years later,
Napoleon conducted
his
Egyptian expedition, certain people blamed
Leibniz
for
planting
the
idea
in his
head.
But the
fact
seems
to be
that
Napoleon
was
unaware
of the
Leibnizian proposal until
he
received
a
copy
of
it
after
he
took Hanover
in
1803.
35
2.
Paris
(1672-76)
Leibniz
was
delighted with Paris.
He
found
it a
very
inexpensive place
to
live,
with
good room
and
board costing only about
25
sols
per
day.
36
But of
course
the
intellectual attractions were what pleased
him
most.
He
reports that
he
spent much time
in the
libraries
and
that
he saw
Moliere acting
on the
stage
in
one of his own
plays.
37
What
was
most important
for
Leibniz's
own
develop-
ment, however,
was
that
he met the
great mathematician Christian Huygens,
who
immediately recognized
his
extraordinary talent
and set him
seriously
to
work
on
mathematics. Leibniz also strove
to
perfect
his
calculating machine
(first
mentioned
in
June
1671),
which
was a
significant
advance over Pascal's,
for
whereas Pascal's would
do
only addition
and
subtraction
in a
direct way,
Leibniz's would also
do
multiplication
and
division.
38
(In a
letter
of
recom-
mendation that
he
wrote
for
himself
to
Duke Johann Friedrich
of
Brunswick-
Liineburg, Leibniz boasted that
his
machine would even extract
the
square
and
cube roots,
but
unfortunately this
was not
true.)
39
Sent
to
London
in
1673
as an
assistant
in
another diplomatic mission,
Leibniz took
his
machine with
him to
exhibit
it to the
Royal Society.
To his
dismay,
it was
rather nastily criticized
by
Robert Hooke
(of
Hooke's Law).
Hooke apparently
was
unable
to
appreciate
the
essential advantage
of
Leibniz's machine over
his own
device, which
was a
sort
of
mechanical slide
rule that made
use of a
logarithmic scale. Other Englishmen were friendlier;
Leibniz visited
the
famous chemist Robert Boyle
and
through
him met the
34
Guhrauer
1,
109.
But see
Wiedeburg
(1969),
who has
examined
the
sources
and has
con-
cluded
(p.
217)
that
this
remark
was not
directed
to
Leibniz's
plan
but to
another.
35
Guhrauer
1,
110-111.
36
Chronik
33.
37
Op.
cit,
30.
Moliere
died
in the
next
year.
38
Op.
cit.,
22, G III
196.
Cf. G I
202,
where
he
emphasizes
its
superiority
to the
slide
rule.
39
A.2.1.160;
cf.
Guhrauer
1,
113.
I am
grateful
to Dr.
Heinz-Jurgen
Hess
for
pointing
out to
me
that
in
1671
there
was no
operable
example
of
Leibniz's
machine,
and
that
the
first
model,
built
of
wood
in
1672,
could
not
even
accomplish
division
directly.
The
later
models,
made
of
brass,
could
indeed
do the
four
basic
operations
directly,
but to
manage
root
extraction,
the
operator
would
have
had to
make
use of
series
of
which
Leibniz
was
unaware
before
1673.
Life
and
Works
23
mathematician
John
Pell,
who
gave
him
some
useful
instruction.
He
reports
also that
he
bought
all the
books
his
modest purse would allow.
Returning
to
Paris,
he
immersed himself
in
mathematics. Although
he
received some
offers
of
employment
in
Germany—among them
a
most
flattering
one
from
Duke Johann Friedrich, whose service
he
later
entered—
he
managed
to get
permission
from
the
successors
of
Boineburg
and the
elector
to
remain
in
Paris
for a
time, serving
as
tutor
to
Boineburg's
son and
doing various other tasks.
There
is an
amusing letter
in
which
he
advises
Boineburg's widow that
her son has all the
necessary abilities
but
simply
will
not
apply himself.
40
Presumably
the
young
man
straightened himself
out
later,
for he
eventually held
a
number
of
important diplomatic posts.
Leibniz
remained
in
Paris
until 1676. This period
was an
extremely busy
one for
him.
He
continued
his
studies
with
Huygens; became acquainted with
Nicolas
de
Malebranche, Antoine Arnauld,
and the
mathematician Walter
Tschirnhaus; invented
a
special kind
of
clock that
he
exhibited
to the
French
Academy
of
Sciences; became himself
a
member
of
that academy;
and
obtained
a
large number
of
mathematical results, culminating
in
1676
in his
discovery
of the
differential
and
integral calculus.
The
records
show that also
during
1676
he
obtained access
to
Descartes's manuscripts,
visited
Spinoza,
and
made another trip
to
England, where
he was
allowed
to see
some
of
Newton's
papers.
It has
been
pointed
out
that
not the
least
of the
advantages
of
his
stay
in
Paris
was his
achieving some
fluency
in
French,
for at
that time
almost
all
learned correspondence
was
conducted
in
Latin, French,
or
English,
and
only later
did
German come into
use for
such purposes.
Finally,
in
December
of the
same year, Leibniz agreed
to go to
Hanover
to be
librarian
and
adviser
to the
aforementioned Duke Johann Friedrich.
He
remained
in
that position
for the
rest
of his
life,
under three successive dukes,
the
last
of
whom became George
I of
England.
The
contrast between Paris
and
Hanover—the former
the
intellectual center
of
Europe
at the
time
and
the
latter
a
relatively
insignificant
town
of
about
ten
thousand
souls
41
—must
have
seemed enormous
to the
brilliant
young man,
who was
then reaching
the
height
of his
powers.
But
only later
did
Leibniz begin
to
complain about
the
intellectual
isolation
of his new
home
and to
realize
how
much that isolation
was
costing him.
42
3.
In
Hanover, under
Three
Princes
At
first
Leibniz
was
evidently pleased with
his new
position (though
his
letters
do
show that
he had to
keep asking
the
duke
for a
raise
in
salary). Early
40
A.l.1.370-73.
41
G.
Scheel,
in
Totok
89.
42
In
1696
he
wrote
from
Hanover
to
Thomas
Burnet
(G III
175): "All
my
difficulties
derive
from
the
fact
that
I am not in a
great city like Paris
or
London, which have
a
plethora
of
learned
men
from whom
one can
obtain instruction
and
assistance.
For
there
is
much that
one
cannot
do
by
oneself.
Here
one
finds
hardly anyone with whom
to
talk; indeed, around
here
one is not
regarded
as a
proper
courtier
if
one
speaks
of
learned matters,
and
without
the
Duchess
(Sophie)
one
would discuss such things even less."
Cf.
Guhrauer
2,
278.
24 The
Philosophy
of
Leibniz
in
1678
he
wrote
to his
friend
Tschirnhaus, outlining some
of the
advantages
that
life
in the
court
was
providing: complete intellectual freedom,
no
bacchanalian
or
saturnalian disturbances,
and
practically
no
duties other
than that
of
dressing reasonably well.
43
A few
months later, however,
he
wrote
to
Herman
Conring that
he now had
more
duties, mostly legal.
44
In his
"spare"
time,
of
course,
he was
carrying
on an
immense correspondence with
the
learned
world
of his
day; most
of his
papers
in
logic date
from
this period,
as do his
first
plans
to
pump water
out of the
silver
mines
in the
nearby Harz
mountains.
45
At the end of
1679 Duke
Johann
Friedrich died
and was
succeeded
by his
brother, Ernst August,
who
reigned until 1698. Leibniz wrote
to
Huygens:
I
have
suffered
a
huge
loss
in the
death
of my
lord
the
Duke,
who,
even
apart
from
his
princely
qualities,
was
certainly
one of the
greatest
men I
have
known.
But his
brother,
the
Duke
of
Osnabruck,
who has
taken
up the
reins
of
government
and has
already
shown
that
in
this
House
virtue
and
nobility
are to be a
certain
extent
hereditary,
has
given
us
grounds
for
some
consolation
over
the
loss,
which
could
not
be
better made
up
than
by
such
a
successor.
46
Soon, however,
Ernst
August
put
Leibniz
to
work
on an
incredibly time-
consuming task that
was to
extend
to the end of his
life
and
that probably
deprived Western philosophy
of
some great contributions.
47
This
was the
task
of
compiling
a
detailed history
of the
house
of
Branswick-Luneburg,
from
Otto
the
Child (768) down
to the
(then) present.
The
basic purpose,
so
far
as one can
make out,
was to
establish
the
legal claims
of
Ernst August
to a
connection with,
and
thereby
an
inheritance
from,
the
famous
and
wealthy
Italian
house
of
Este.
By the
time
of his
death Leibniz
had
only reached
the
year
1005,
and
even
the
completed portion
of the
work
was
left
to
gather dust
in
the
archives until
it was
finally
published
by
Georg Heinrich Pertz
in
1843.
To
collect materials
for
this history, Leibniz spent
the
greater part
of the
years
1687-90
traveling
in
southern Germany, Austria,
and
Italy,
visiting
libraries, consulting other scholars,
and
examining records
and
manuscripts
in
monasteries
and in
private collections.
48
His
route took
him to
Frankfurt,
Munich, Vienna (where
he
remained
for
some nine months), Venice,
Florence,
Rome,
and
Naples,
as
well
as to
many smaller places along
the
way.
49
43
Chronik
5l.
44
Op.
cit.,
52-53.
45
Water
was
normally pumped
out of the
Harz
silver mines
by
means
of
waterwheels
actuated
by the
streams
on the
surface. Thus,
in
drought years
the
mining
was
often
brought
to a
stop
by
subterranean
flooding.
Leibniz
drafted
plans
for a
system
of
windmills that would pump
water
up
from
the
pits into holding basins;
on
windless days
the
pumps were
to be
operated
by
releasing
the
accumulated water
from
these
basins.
But
after
six
years
of
work
on the
plan,
it was
given
up. Cf. K.
Muller,
in
Totok
34-35.
46
Chronik
60.
47
Leibniz
to
Thomas
Burnett,
30
October
1710
(G III
321):
"If I
were relieved
of my
histori-
cal
tasks
I
would
set
myself
to
establishing
the
elements
of
general philosophy
and
natural theol-
ogy,
which
comprise what
is
most important
in
that philosophy
for
both theory
and
practice."
48
Chronik83ff.
49
Ernst August
had
approved only
a
trip
to
Modena,
but
Leibniz made
a
tour
of it. Cf. K.
Muller,
in
Totok
49.
Life
and
Works
25
In
addition
to
exploring archives
and
making many valuable acquaintances
in
the
learned world,
he is
said
to
have
had
certain experiences
not
essentially
unlike
those that
befall
the
modern-day tourist.
For
example, Eckhart
reports:
From
Venice Leibniz went,
as the
only passenger
in a
small sailing vessel, along
the
coast
and out to
sea.
A
frightful
storm came
up. He has
often told
me how the
seamen,
believing
that
he did not
understand their language, made plans
in his
presence
to
throw
him
overboard
and
divide
up his
possessions among themselves.
He did not let
on
that
he
understood
but
instead took
out a
rosary that
he
happened
to
have
with
him
and
pretended
to be
praying. Upon this,
one of the
seamen announced that, inasmuch
as
the man was no
heretic,
he
could
not
allow
him to be
killed.
So
Leibniz escaped with
his
life
and was set
ashore near Mesola.
50
Leibniz
was
very well received
in
Rome.
He was
given unlimited access
to
the
Vatican
and
Barberini libraries
and was
made
a
member
of the
Acca-
demia Fisico-Matematica.
He
composed
a
votive poem
for the
health
and
safety
of
Pope
Innocent
XI, who was in his
final
illness,
and
upon
the
election
of
the new
pope,
Alexander VIII,
he
took
up the pen
again
to
write
Poenitentia
gloriosa orbis Christiani carmen gratulatorium
ad
S.D.N. Alexan-
drum
VIII
Pontificem
Maximum.
Perhaps partly
in
response
to
these
gestures
of
goodwill,
he was
offered
the
position
of
custodian
of the
Vatican
library,
but on
condition that
he
join
the
Catholic
church—a
condition
he
declined
to
meet.
51
In
December 1689 Leibniz reached Modena,
the
principal location
of
the
Este
family
records
and the
ultimate destination
of his
trip.
At
Augsburg
two
years earlier
he had
found,
by
consulting
the
original manuscript
of the
Historia
de
Guelfis
principibus,that
in a
crucial reference "Estense"
had
been
miscopied
by the
editors
as
"Astense."
And now in
Modena,
after
working
on
various
documents
and
records
twelve
hours
a day for two
solid months,
he
discovered what
he was
looking for:
a
complete account
of
"the true
connection
of the
illustrious houses
of
Brunswick
and
Este."
52
From Modena
he
journeyed
up the Po
River
to
Ferrara
and
then
to the
abbey
of
Vangadizza.
There
he
located
the
tombs
of the old
margraves
of
Este
and
managed
to
decipher
the
various
identifying
inscriptions,
and in
particular
the
epitaph
of
the
Countess Kunigunde, whose
son
Welf
IV
(1070-1101)
was the
Bavarian
nobleman
who
founded
the
Guelph dynasty.
53
When Leibniz reported this crucial success
to
Hanover,
he
received
by
return mail, instead
of
congratulations, another assignment that
was of
quite
a
different
nature
and was in
some ways even more
difficult.
The
Duchess
Sophie,
his
good friend
at the
court, asked
him to
arrange
a
marriage between
50
Chronik
95;
Guhrauer
2,
87-88.
In
"Murder considered
as one of the
fine
arts,"
Thomas
De
Quincey recounts
a
similar story about Descartes.
Cf. De
Quincey
(1897),
vol.
13,
25-26.
However,
De
Quincey
is
hardly
a
reliable source;
cf. op.
cit., vol.
5,
357n,
where
the "no two
leaves
are
exactly alike" story (see
p.
132)
is
transported
to
Kensington Gardens
in
London!
51
Chronik
97;
Guhrauer
2, 88,
93-94.
52
Chronik 100.
53
Guhrauer
2,
103; Chronik 101.
26 The
Philosophy
of
Leibniz
the
Duke
of
Modena
and one of the
daughters
of the
late Johann Friedrich.
A
previous emissary,
a
Count Dragoni,
had
failed
at the
task—perhaps,
as
Sophie conjectures, because
of his
back trouble.
"For,"
she
wrote,
"there
is a
close connection between one's back
and the
gland that
M.
Descartes talks
about,
and
since
the
Count
has a
great deal
of
trouble
with
that part
of
him-
self,
it is not
surprising that
he has
done
so
poorly
in
negotiation."
54
Leibniz
was
more
successful,
though
five
years elapsed before Princess Charlotte
Felicitas became
the
Duchess
of
Modena.
Two
very important
figures
in
Leibniz's
life
during this time were
the
just-
mentioned Duchess Sophie,
wife
of
Duke Ernst August,
and her
daughter
Sophie Charlotte, later queen
of
Prussia.
55
These
bright, talented,
and
energetic women provided some welcome relief
from
the
general intellectual
emptiness
of the
Hanoverian court. Duchess Sophie, whom Leibniz served
for
thirty-four
years until
her
death
in
1714,
was a
lively, good-humored lady
who,
as the
first
electress
of
Hanover
and the
mother
of the
first
queen
of
Prussia
and of the
first
Hanoverian king
of
England, played
a
significant role
in
the
Europe
of her
time.
She and
Leibniz
had
frequent discussions
on all
manner
of
political, social,
and
philosophical topics, arid when
he was
away
from
Hanover, they exchanged some three hundred letters.
56
She
also
saw to
it
that
her
daughter
had the
benefit
of
Leibniz's great learning.
Sophie Charlotte
was an apt
pupil, whose sharp mind helped Leibniz
to
clarify
some
of his own
ideas.
He
tells
us
that
his
Theodicy
was the
outcome
of
their philosophical discussions, which
in
later years
often
took place
during
walks through
the
grounds
of the
Lietzenburg (Charlottenburg)
palace
in
Berlin.
57
According
to
Frederick
the
Great,
who was her
grandson,
"This princess
had the
genius
of a
great
man and the
knowledge
of a
savant;
she
did not
deem
it
unworthy
of a
queen
to
admire
a
philosopher;
the
philoso-
pher
was
Leibniz,
and she
bestowed
her
friendship
on him
with
the
thought
that those
to
whom Heaven
has
given noble minds
are the
equivalent
of
kings."
58
Something
of
Sophie Charlotte's nature,
and of her
regard
for
Leibniz,
is
suggested
by
what
she is
reported
to
have said
on her
deathbed:
"Don't
grieve
for
me, for I am
about
to
satisfy
my
curiosity about things that even Leibniz
was
never able
to
explain—space,
the
infinite, being,
and
nothingness—and
54
Guhrauer
2,
105.
55
On
this topic
in
general,
see
Fischer
243-92.
56
Fischer
243.
57
Chronik
179;
Fischer
260-61;
G VI
39ff.
(H
63ff.).
Like Leibniz
in
Hanover,
Sophie
Charlotte complains that
in
Berlin
she has no one
with whom
to
talk (Fischer
256).
A
considerable portion
of
Leibniz's
immense correspondence
was
with women.
For a
very
interesting
and
informative account
of
this,
see
Utermohlen
(1980);
she
points
out
that Leibniz
did
not
share
the
view, prevalent then
and not
unheard
of in our own
time, that
in
intellectual
matters women
are
naturally inferior. Leibniz cites
the
Countess Anne Conway
as one
example,
among others,
of
women with extraordinary philosophical "penetration,"
i.e.,
sharpness
and
depth
(G III
336-37).
And he
chides
the
Countess Kielmannsegg:
"It
would
be
just
as
easy,
Madame,
for you and
your friend
to
master geometry
as it is for us, but you
just
don't
want
to
take
the
trouble."
58
Fischer
125.
Life
and
Works
27
for
my
husband,
the
king,
I am
about
to
provide
a
funeral-spectacle that
will
give
him a new
opportunity
to
display
his
pomposity
and
splendor!"
59
For
most
of
Leibniz's
life,
these women were
his
principal advocates
at
the
courts
in
Hanover
and
Berlin. Sophie Charlotte's sudden death
in
1705
devastated him;
60
it was
such
an
obvious loss
to him
that
he
even received
formal
expressions
of
sympathy
from
the
emissaries
of foreign
govern-
ments;
61
and
when Duchess Sophie, whom
he had
served
for so
long, died
in
1714,
his
ability
to
obtain support
for
anything
other than continuing
the
Brunswick
history came
to an
end.
To
return
to our
narrative: Arriving back
in
Hanover
in
1690, Leibniz
accepted
an
appointment
as
librarian
at
nearby Wolfenbuttel,
by
Duke
Anton
of
Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.
This was,
of
course,
an
addition
to his
duties
at
Hanover, which also included
a
librarianship,
and he
accepted
the
new
position only because
he
could
see
that
his
historical researches were
going
to
require
his
spending
a
considerable amount
of
time
in the
Wolfen-
biittel
library anyway.
62
From this time
on
Leibniz remained
in the
vicinity
of
Hanover except
for
occasional sojourns, seldom
of
more than
a few
weeks' duration,
in
Berlin
and
Vienna.
He
continued
to
work
on the
history, though obviously
with
decreasing enthusiasm
after
the
main question
had
been
answered.
(In
1691
he
estimated that
he
could complete
it in
1693
if he got
sufficient
support;
as
we
noted earlier, however,
at his
death
in
1716
he had
reached only
the
year
1005.)
63
But in
addition
he
administered
the
libraries
and the
mint, served
as
an
adviser
on
legal
and
political questions, provided engineering
and
archi-
tectural
advice,
and did
innumerable other jobs
for his
employers—all
the
while
continuing
to
produce
on the
side
the
mass
of
philosophical, mathe-
matical,
theological,
and
other writing
for
which
he is
primarily known.
Under
the
circumstances,
it is not
surprising that
his
work
was
somewhat
disorganized.
Even
as a
young
man in
Paris
he had
written
to his
friend,
the
Hamburg jurist Vincent Placcius:
You
will
ask
what
I, who was so
generous
with
promises,
have
since
accomplished.
The
answer
is: I
have
begun
much,
but
carried
out and
completed
nothing.
. . But I had to
go to
France.
.
.and have been occupied
with
everything
other than
jurisprudence.
. .
and
have
been
studying
mathematics,...,and
so
forth.
64
Twenty years later
the
pattern
is the
same,
and it was to
remain
the
same
for
the
rest
of his
life.
Writing
to the
same
friend
in
1695,
he
says:
I
cannot tell
you how
extraordinarily
distracted
and
spread
out
[zerstreut]
I am. I
am
trying
to find
various
things
in the
archives;
I
look
at old
papers
and
hunt
up
unpublished
documents.
From
these
I
hope
to get
some
light
on the
history
of
Brunswick.
I
receive
and
answer
a
huge
number
of
letters.
At the
same
time,
I
have
so
many
mathematical
results, philosophical
thoughts,
and
other
literary
innovations
that
59
Ibid.
Chronik 105.
60
Chronik 195;
G
III
366-67.
Op.cit., 107.
61
Fischer
265
Op.cit.,
43.
62
28 The
Philosophy
of
Leibniz
should
not be
left
to
disappear, that
I
often
do not
know where
to
begin.
. .
.Thanks
to
the
help
of a
craftsman whom
I
have engaged,
the
calculator with which
one can do
multiplications
up to
twelve decimal places
is
finally
ready.
A
year
has
gone
by; I
still
have
the
craftsman
with
me in
order
to
make more machines
of
this type,
for
they
are in
constant
demand.
65
Prominent among Leibniz's innumerable schemes
for
improving
the
world were
his
plans
for
reconciling
the
Protestants
and the
Catholics.
Actually,
his
efforts
in the
direction
of
such
a
reunion
had
begun even
at
Mainz, where
he
joined
in a
project initiated
by
Boineburg
and the
elector.
Perhaps impressed
by the
devastation
of the
Thirty Years' War,
and in any
event unable
to see any
really important doctrinal
difference
between
the two
churches, Leibniz never could understand
why
they should
not get
together.
To
illustrate this point,
he
used
to
tell
the
story
of two
English theologians
and
controversialists,
the
brothers John
and
William Rainhold,
of
whom
he
had
heard
on his
trip
to
England.
Both brothers lived
in the
reign
of
Queen Elizabeth. John,
who
resided
in the
Spanish
Netherlands,
had
become
a
Catholic;
William,
who
lived
in
England, remained
Protestant.
In
their letters they argued energetically about religious topics, each trying
to
draw
the
other over
to his
side,
but in
vain. Finally they
set a
time
and
place
for a
face-to-face
debate,
in
order
to
convert
one
another. Both succeeded;
both
won; both
lost. Each
was
persuaded
by the
other; each regretted that
he had
persuaded
the
other.
So
they switched religions
and
domiciles. John went
to
England
in
place
of his
brother;
William
remained
in the
Netherlands.
And
from
then
on,
each defended
his new
belief
with
all
possible
sharpness
66
The
treatise called Systema theologicum
,
67
in
which Leibniz examined
the
details
of
Catholic
and
Protestant creeds
in
order
to
show
how
their
differences
could
be
resolved, probably dates
from
1686, just before
he set
out on the
Italian trip. Later,
at the
urging
of the
Duchess Sophie,
he
entered
into
an
extended correspondence about these matters with
the
French
historian
and
theologian Paul Pellisson-Fontanier
and
with
J. B.
Bossuet,
the
bishop
of
Meaux.
The
latter, especially, hoped
to
convert Leibniz
to
Catholicism,
and
when
it
became obvious that this would
not
occur,
the
correspondence ceased. Leibniz also
had a
scheme
for the
union
of the
Reformed
and
Lutheran churches,
but
this
met
with
no
greater success than
the
other.
When Sophie Charlotte became queen
of
Prussia
in
1701,
the
connection
with
Berlin increased
the
political importance
of the
house
of
Brunswick,
and
Leibniz
had a new
opportunity
to
realize some
of his
favorite projects.
One
such
proposal
was the
institution
of an
academy
at
Berlin
to
promote
science
and
culture,
on the
model
of the
French Academy
in
Paris. With
the
queen's
help,
the
Berlin (Prussian) Academy
of
Sciences
was
founded
on 11
July,
65
Op.cit,
134;cf.Gill
194.
66
Guhrauer
2,
350.
67
F 1
531-652.
Life
and
Works
29
1700, with Leibniz
as its
first
president.
He
also pushed forward with plans
to
establish similar academies
in
Vienna
and St.
Petersburg.
These
activities,
and
especially
the
travels they involved,
did not
endear
him
to the
last
of his
three ducal employers, Georg Ludwig,
who
succeeded
his
father
as
duke
of
Brunswick-Luneburg
in
1698
and who in
1714 (without
particularly
wanting
the
honor)
was
crowned
George
I,
king
of
England.
George
wished Leibniz
to
stay
at
home
in
Hanover
and
work
on the
history
project,
rather than gallivant around
Europe
on
such missions
as
founding
learned societies. Leibniz
finally
paid
the
penalty
for his
truancy when, also
in
1714,
George
denied
his
request
to be
taken along
to
England
as
court
historian. Instead
he was
ordered
to
remain
in
Hanover
to
complete
the
boring task
on
which
he had
labored
for so
many years.
68
From
his
fiftieth
year
to the end of his
life
Leibniz
suffered
from gout.
Eventually
he
began
to
walk with
a
limp,
and by
1714, Eckhart reports,
his
feet,
hands,
and
shoulders were
affected
to
such
an
extent that
he
could
no
longer work
in the
uninterrupted
way
that
was his
custom. Later
the
gout
was
complicated
by
open
sores
on his
right leg. Eckhart,
as
quoted
by
Guhrauer,
conjectures that this
new
malady
was
brought
on by
Leibniz's
own
habits.
Normally
he
first
went
to bed at one or two in the
morning. Often
he
just
slept
in his
chair,
and
would
be
awake again
and
ready
to go at six or
seven
in the
morning. Some-
times
he
would remain several days
in his
chair.
I
believe that this
is
what
led to his
having
an
open
sore
on his right
leg. This caused
him
difficulty
in
walking;
he
tried
to
remedy
it, but
only
by
putting blotting paper
on it.
Later,
to
reduce
the
pain
and to
make
the
nerves insensitive
he had a
number
of
wooden clamps made,
and
these
he
screwed onto himself wherever
he
felt
pain.
I
suspect that
by
doing this
he so
damaged
his
nerves that eventually
he
could
no
longer
use his
feet
and had to
stay
in
bed.
69
To the
end, Leibniz
was
skeptical
of the
medical profession, preferring
to
treat himself with various elixirs
and
potions that
had
been
recommended
to
him
by
acquaintances.
70
The
affected
leg
became progressively worse, and,
68
W.
Ohnsorge,
in
Totok 188:
"On 30
November 1714
the
King issued
his
Privy
Council
an
official
order
in
which
he
observed
that
Leibniz,
after
his
absence
in
Vienna,
had
departed once
again despite
his
promise
of
energetic work
on the
Guelph history. They were
to
remind
him in
the
name
of the
King that
as
early
as
1691
he had
solemnly sworn
to
finish
the
work
in a few
years.
Now
more than
twenty
years
had
passed without
any
result.
The
King expects that
until
the
end of the
work Leibniz
will
desist
from
traveling
and
other distractions,
'in
order that
we and
our
house
may
finally
have reliable information
as to
whether
and
when
we can
hope
to
enjoy
the
fruits
of our
long
and
patient wait.'"
69
Guhrauer
2,
336.
70
G
VI110
(131):
"It is
nature that cures
us,
rather than medicine."
His
skepticism
is
under-
standable when
one
reads
his
suggestions
for
needed improvements
in the
practice
of
medicine:
blood tests
and
transfusions, autopsies, experimentation with animals
and
even with human
beings
if not
dangerous
to
them,
study
of the
spread
of
disease, regular measurement
of the
patient's temperature, regular physical examinations, routine recording
of
data about
the
course
of
the
patient's illness, establishment
of
more medical schools, socialized medicine.
Of
professors
of
medicine
he
said: "They speak more
to the
ears than
to the
understanding"
(E.
Hochstetter,
Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz 1646-1716,
in Die
Grossen
Deutschen,
Berlin, 1956,
vol.
2,
13); Hartmann
and
Kriiger (1976); Steudel (1969).